Holy Roman Empire
Holy Roman Empire - PJ Paterson, Sanderson Contemporary Art, 02 June to 21 June 2009
PJ Paterson uses gritty renderings of urban spaces to create vivid depictions of society's decaying edges. His process involves collecting images that resonate with him then collating, ordering and transforming this base matter to establish patterns and meanings. The large amount of source material required is derived primarily from the artist’s original photography, but also from appropriated imagery widespread throughout popular culture. Images may be chosen that are overtly political or culturally significant or just visually cool.
His current body of work focuses on train yards, hot beds of graffiti and vandalism and free creative spaces for the work of street artists. The existence of trains in their derelict condition presents an anomaly, since these activities can be viewed as creation or destruction, depending on your point of view. Accordingly Paterson’s trains are depicted as mechanical relics simultaneously undergoing a process of incremental destruction and re-birth. Appropriated as aesthetic objects by the artist they become metaphors for different-but-related themes, including political expression and dispossession; capitalism and poverty; responsible use and profligate waste.
A vivid palette creates intense energy in the paintings, mirroring the activity of the graffiti artists who have 'occupied' the train's spaces. There is a sense of struggle, resistance and the voiceless being given a means of expression. The act of putting the images into a gallery setting informs the debate over the status of such images - grungy rubbish or pop art? Paterson’s works reflect the reverence with which such icons are now held by the street artists whose works decorate the mouldering hulks. He devotes extensive time to documenting the surfaces of the trains as important social records of a counter-culture.
The series is a playful comment on the fascination that these monuments to technology and machinery continue to hold, long after they have ceased to be useful. The dereliction of the subjects is a marker of the passing of time and of changing societal priorities. As we move from the industrial age to the information age, the trains have lost their utility value and have passed from the hands of the powerful into the realm of the dispossessed, who can appropriate only what we no longer wish to own.
Paterson’s works capture vestiges of the romance these great machines hold in our collective memory, his compositions recalling the grandeur of Russian poster art of the 1930s – which celebrates railways at their zenith. This portrayal, combined with their obvious degradation, means the trains retain the dual status of idealised icon and decayed monument.
Although working primarily as a painter at present, Paterson’s conceptual practice also incorporates work in digital formats, sculpture and photography. The many strands of his collected imagery will give rise to new series in the future, which will continue his investigation of the myriad points at which mainstream society intersects with its overlooked elements.
PJ Paterson uses gritty renderings of urban spaces to create vivid depictions of society's decaying edges. His process involves collecting images that resonate with him then collating, ordering and transforming this base matter to establish patterns and meanings. The large amount of source material required is derived primarily from the artist’s original photography, but also from appropriated imagery widespread throughout popular culture. Images may be chosen that are overtly political or culturally significant or just visually cool.
His current body of work focuses on train yards, hot beds of graffiti and vandalism and free creative spaces for the work of street artists. The existence of trains in their derelict condition presents an anomaly, since these activities can be viewed as creation or destruction, depending on your point of view. Accordingly Paterson’s trains are depicted as mechanical relics simultaneously undergoing a process of incremental destruction and re-birth. Appropriated as aesthetic objects by the artist they become metaphors for different-but-related themes, including political expression and dispossession; capitalism and poverty; responsible use and profligate waste.
A vivid palette creates intense energy in the paintings, mirroring the activity of the graffiti artists who have 'occupied' the train's spaces. There is a sense of struggle, resistance and the voiceless being given a means of expression. The act of putting the images into a gallery setting informs the debate over the status of such images - grungy rubbish or pop art? Paterson’s works reflect the reverence with which such icons are now held by the street artists whose works decorate the mouldering hulks. He devotes extensive time to documenting the surfaces of the trains as important social records of a counter-culture.
The series is a playful comment on the fascination that these monuments to technology and machinery continue to hold, long after they have ceased to be useful. The dereliction of the subjects is a marker of the passing of time and of changing societal priorities. As we move from the industrial age to the information age, the trains have lost their utility value and have passed from the hands of the powerful into the realm of the dispossessed, who can appropriate only what we no longer wish to own.
Paterson’s works capture vestiges of the romance these great machines hold in our collective memory, his compositions recalling the grandeur of Russian poster art of the 1930s – which celebrates railways at their zenith. This portrayal, combined with their obvious degradation, means the trains retain the dual status of idealised icon and decayed monument.
Although working primarily as a painter at present, Paterson’s conceptual practice also incorporates work in digital formats, sculpture and photography. The many strands of his collected imagery will give rise to new series in the future, which will continue his investigation of the myriad points at which mainstream society intersects with its overlooked elements.
PJ Paterson is represented by Sanderson Contemporary Art, Auckland, New Zealand
For all sales enquiries please contact the gallery: www.sanderson.co.nz
For all sales enquiries please contact the gallery: www.sanderson.co.nz
